The cabinet making industry basically consists of two distinct manufacturing procedures.
One such procedure is termed in the industry as "factory cabinets". This means cabinets being produced at a large volume, with the use of high speed computerized machinery, and employing unskilled labor.
Because of market demands, especially in the housing industry, factory cabinets are produced with very little attention to quality. Particularly joint construction, where in some cases joint making is avoided altogether.
Whereas a market for economical factory cabinetry exists, there also exists a market for fine quality custom built cabinetry. This being the second procedure of cabinet manufacturing.
Custom cabinet manufacturing involves a complete design by an architect and hand crafting by skilled artisan cabinetmakers. The reasons architects or owners would prefer custom cabinetry over "factory cabinets" are specialized work functions, aesthetics, marketing needs, unusual space restrictions, and durability.
To produce cabinetry of this stature the upmost painstaking procedures must be followed. All cabinetry of high quality are constructed with the use of dados. Precision cabinet making is wholly dependent upon the preciseness of the dado.
Dados being grooves in the cabinet end panels to receive a bottom or a back. Another place where dadoes may occur is in drawer structure. Yet another place where dados may occur is to recess shelf standard. Shelf standard being a vertical member with horizontal slots equally spaced, as to receive seats for shelves to rest on.
To date most all custom cabinet shops make dados by the use of a table saw. This has a multitude of drawbacks. One being that the table saw is pre-occupied with making dados, stopping production of other cutting operations. Another one being that the dado is cut from the bottom side of the work piece, allowing inaccurate dados to be made. Yet another drawback being that the operator cannot see the operation taking place. Still another drawback is on cross grain material of melamines, the prior art procedure of dadoing leaves the groove (dado) chipped and splintered.
Generally speaking, most all custom cabinet shops are of very small stature, by volume and number of employees. Therefore it would be ludicrous for a custom cabinet shop to make a large capital investment in high speed equipment. Such an example is U.S. Pat. No. 4,112,986, using routers to make dados. This equipment would not suffice in a custom cabinet shop. Not only is the capital investment beyond most custom shops' means, a major drawback is that you cannot cut a perfect dado going cross grain or through melamine. Router bits used on malamine and particularly on cross grain woods tend to fray and splinter the work piece making dado grooves in general unsightly and inaccurate. Also the dado width is totally dependent upon the diameter of the router bit. After the router bit is sharpened, its diameter is smaller. Therefore inadequate for the required width of the dado. Router bits therefore have to be discarded and replaced with new. The extraordinary cost of carbide and diamond tooling can make this an expensive operation.
We could also look at U.S. Pat. No. 3,036,605. Here we have some of the same drawbacks. One being the chipping and splintering of the work piece. Yet another being an enormous amount of mechanically moving parts. The more moving parts a machine has, the more change of a malfunction.
In essence: Without the means of scoring the work piece before making the primary dado, neither a router bit, nor a circular rotating blade will make a clean, precise dado.
The object of the present invention herein described and illustrated, is to provide an economical means of cutting precision dados into sheet materials.
Another object of the present invention is to provide protection to the operator, meaning the configuration of the guard.
Another object of the present invention is to provide directional flow of work piece, meaning the configuration of said guard, has a diagonal slant at the in-feed side only.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a controlled dado depth, meaning the distance between the work surface and cutters.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an automatic work piece transfer system, means in-feed and out-feed by tapered rotating feed rollers.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide an automatic in-feed and out-feed system that applies constant pressure, means to hold down work piece to work surface.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an automatic in-feed and out-feed system that applies constant pressure of the forementioned work piece, and against a guide, by means of tapered geometric shape of said feed rollers.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide reliefs in the work piece, by the use of scoring blades.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide simplicity in mechanics, means adjustability of a plurality of tooling.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide said mechanics with easy replacement, means readily accessability of replacement parts.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art as further described hereinafter.
The present invention will be more understood with reference to the following accompanying description and accompanying detailed drawings, in which: